The DCCC is planning on pouring money for 2010 into eight California districts with Republican incumbents, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, after an astounding study showed just how vulnerable the GOP is in the Golden State:
"The big picture is that, currently, there is not one single state legislative or congressional district that has a majority of the voters registering Republican," says Allan Hoffenblum, who just finished an analysis for the California Target Book, a nonpartisan publication that regularly analyzes state congressional and legislative races.
Hoffenblum says he can't recall another time in state history when the GOP was in such a dire situation: "Republican registration in California is dropping like a rock.
"There's a large slice of voters there being turned off by the Republican Party," said Hoffenblum. "What's really hurting them there is an increase in middle-class Asian and Latino voters - and they're not voting Republican. They're registering decline-to-state."
Hard to believe Asian and Latino voters would be turned off by a party of xenophobic immigrant bashers, eh?
The DCCC is preparing to rush into the California breach with money and candidate recruitment in eight targeted districts that Republican incumbents currently hold but were won in 2008 by Obama:
The vulnerable California districts with Republican representatives that were won by Obama are those of Reps. Dan Lungren of Gold River (Sacramento County), Mary Bono-Mack of Palm Springs, David Dreier of San Dimas (Los Angeles County), Elton Gallegly of Thousand Oaks (Ventura County), Brian Bilbray of Solana Beach (San Diego County), John Campbell of Newport Beach (Orange County), Ken Calvert of Riverside and Howard "Buck" McKeon of Santa Clarita (Los Angeles County), the committee says.
Calvert and Bono-Mack in particular are sitting in seats in one of the counties (Riverside) hardest hit by foreclosures in the nation, where traditional Republican arguments about pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps might fall on deaf ears (as well as Asian and Latino ears that are sick of being the Grand Old Party's bogeymen).